Meng Wanzhou: Canada border agent ‘falsified account of questioning’, defence lawyer claims in court
- Sowmith Katragadda’s notes about the questioning of the Huawei executive at Vancouver’s airport contradict those of his supervisor, lawyer Mona Duckett says in hearing
- Duckett has been trying to prove that Katragadda’s conduct was a result of police and FBI direction, and not just for border purposes
A Canadian border agent’s account of his questioning of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou, in the hours before her arrest, was falsified and “cannot be true”, Meng’s lawyer said on Friday, highlighting discrepancies between the agent’s notes and those of his supervisor.
Canada Border Services Agency officer Sowmith Katragadda was in charge of questioning Meng at Vancouver’s airport on December 1, 2018.
He and other CBSA officers have insisted in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver that the process was solely intended to determine Meng’s admissibility to Canada.
But Meng’s lawyer, Mona Duckett, has said Katragadda was acting as a “proxy” for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and that his questioning and the securing of Meng’s electronic devices and passcodes were part of a covert evidence-gathering exercise orchestrated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the Supreme Court on Friday, Duckett asked Katragadda about his notes, which say that when he had wanted to adjourn Meng’s questioning, he was instead told to ask more questions, provided to Katragadda’s supervisor by the CBSA’s national security unit.
Katragadda’s notes say he asked Meng the extra questions at 1.09pm.
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But notes by Katragadda’s supervisor, Bryce McRae, say he only got in touch with the unit at 1.35pm. Therefore, Katragadda’s account “cannot be true … I put it to you that that is false”, Duckett said. In response, Katragadda said he could not know whether McRae’s notes were in error.
Duckett has been trying to prove that Katragadda’s conduct was a result of direction from the police and the FBI, and not just for border services purposes.
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Meng’s legal team argues that the border process, conducted before Meng was told she was about to be arrested on a US warrant, violated her rights, and the American extradition request should therefore be thrown out.
Katragadda’s notes make no mention of a meeting between RCMP officers and CBSA staff that he attended before Meng’s flight landed at 11.10am. The arrest warrant for Meng was discussed at the meeting, he previously testified.
Duckett concluded her cross-examination with a series of suggestions that Katragadda had falsified his account of how he dealt with Meng.
“My proposition is that your notes and statutory declaration were carefully crafted here to make it appear as though your interception of Ms Meng was random … carefully crafted to hide the morning briefing with the RCMP … that you took these phones simply as a proxy for the RCMP … that you took the passcodes [because] the RCMP asked you to,” Duckett said.
Katragadda denied each allegation.
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Next in the witness box on Friday was Constable Gurvinder Dhaliwal, one of the RCMP officers involved in Meng’s arrest.
In direct examination by Canadian government lawyer John Gibb-Carsley, representing US interests in the case, Dhaliwal said he had never heard of Meng or Huawei before being told of the warrant for her arrest on November 30, 2018.
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes adjourned the hearing until Monday, when Dhaliwal will resume his testimony.
US authorities want Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, extradited to New York to face trial on fraud charges, which she denies. She is accused of defrauding HSBC bank by lying about Huawei Technologies’ business dealings in Iran, exposing the bank to the risk of US sanctions on the Middle East country.
Meng’s treatment has infuriated China. Soon after her detention, Beijing arrested Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and accused them of spying. Ottawa considers both men to be victims of hostage-taking.
A string of police and CBSA witnesses have testified that Meng was subjected to normal processes before her arrest, but they have faced stiff cross-examination from Duckett.
One witness, former RCMP staff sergeant Ben Chang, is refusing to testify in the case. Chang, who has retired from the RCMP and now works in the Chinese gambling hub of Macau, said in an affidavit that he never handed over information about Meng’s electronic devices to the FBI, and nor was he asked.
But an RCMP colleague said in contemporaneous notes that Dhaliwal told her Chang had sent the information to the FBI.
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The discrepancy remains unresolved. Canada’s Department of Justice previously cited “witness safety” as it tried to deny Meng’s lawyers the right to see notes of an interview between Chang and a department lawyer.
On Friday, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported that Chang worked as an executive at Galaxy Entertainment, operator of the Galaxy Macau casino and resort.
The extradition hearings are expected to last well into next year, and appeals could drag out the process for years beyond that. Meng is living under partial house arrest in one of the two houses she owns in Vancouver.
